by Joe Buff
"Maneuvering, Bridge," Jeffrey called on the intercom. "Bridge, Maneuvering, aye. Willey here."
"Enj, I need flank speed."
"Sir, there's still the damage to the pump-jet from that two-twelve's weapon near the Azores. We get vibrations around thirty-two knots submerged."
"Will it get worse if we go faster, Enj, or is it a resonance that'll stop?"
"One way to find out, Captain."
"V'r'well. . . . Helm, Bridge."
"Bridge, Helm, aye," Meltzer answered on the intercom. "Ahead flank."
"Ahead flank, aye."
Water began to cream over Challenger's bow. Jeffrey felt it splash as some was deflected up by the streamlined fairing at the base of the sail. He felt the nasty vibrations begin just as Willey predicted, but they subsided as the ship accelerated more, as Jeffrey had hoped. Challenger reached flank speed and ran more smoothly, but flank speed on the surface was much slower than submerged—the unavoidable wave-making wasted power. Jeffrey heard a constant churning rushing as his command cut through the seas, and he felt a frigid wind on his face. The ship rolled badly, the sideways motion exaggerated here atop the sail.
Almost sixty miles to go before we can dive again. German command and control infrastructure would be in disarray with the solar storm, and Challenger had the element of surprise, but sooner or later she'd be found. Once localized, she'd be prosecuted to destruction.
Sixty nautical miles on the surface. An eternity. At least Jeffrey took comfort from his companions shoulder to shoulder.
"Fire Control, Bridge."
"Bridge, Fire Control, aye," Bell answered.
"We need all the firepower we've got. Spool up the gyros, all conventional Tactical Tomahawks in the vertical launch system."
"Bridge, ESM." The Electronic Support Measures room. "Bridge, aye."
"Captain, we're picking up surface-search radars. WM-twenty-five track-while-scan fire control systems. Assess as Bremen-class frigates."
Jeffrey glanced at his laptop screen. One threat was to the north and one to the south, both about twenty thousand yards away—easy gun and missile range. They were converging on Challenger, and she'd entered the new dredged channel south of Saltholm Island. The narrow channel was for deep-draft shipping, and an SSN on the surface had deep draft—Challenger drew almost forty feet, and was really in a bind. If her stern dug in, due to bottom suction from the pump-jet intake, she'd take more damage there. If the stern was trimmed too light, to solve that problem, the pump-jet might suck air instead. Challenger also had no room to maneuver or evade to left or right; outside the channel the water was ten feet deep.
"ESM, Bridge. Is the return signal a threat?" "Difficult to tell in these electromagnetic conditions, Captain."
It didn't matter—the frigates were faster than Challenger now, and the one to the north had her decisively cut off.
Jeffrey saw a flash to the north through his goggles: a strong infrared emitter, persisting, getting brighter fast.
"Bridge, ESM. J-band homing radar! Inbound Harpoon."
The burning light in the fog got closer and Jeffrey could hear the Mach .85 antiship missile roar.
"ESM, go active. Try to spoof it!"
The light and noise approached Jeffrey steadily—a Harpoon warhead was deadly against any submarine. It came down to a contest between Challenger's low-observable sail and her electronic countermeasures, and the Harpoon's advanced target seekers and the frigate's counter-countermeasures. Challenger barely won, this time. The missile tore past the sail and Jeffrey felt its sizzling engine exhaust. It veered west, under external targeting control, to avoid the frigate to the south. It self-destructed with a hard blam and a stabbing glare. Jeffrey felt the shock and a wave of blast-furnace heat. The fog bank cleared, leaving Challenger naked. The sky was overcast here. Jeffrey switched visor modes—the pixel gain control would keep the imagery from flaring, and help preserve his night vision. The blackout of the Swedish and Danish coasts was absolute.
Another missile was launched from the Bremen to the north.
This time the Harpoon came much closer before it missed and self-destructed.
"Bridge, ESM. They're defeating our countermeasures."
That was the problem with electronic warfare. Every time you radiated you gave something away, and the other guy responded. Jeffrey thought hard. He could fire ADCAPs at both frigates, but torpedo attack speed was barely a tenth of a Harpoon's. There was no time to switch the load in a torpedo tube.
"Weps, Bridge. Target an antishipping Tomahawk from the VLS at each of the Bremens, smartly." The vertical launch system was twelve cruise-missile tubes built into Challenger's forward ballast tanks.
"Captain," Bell said, "we've no procedures for using the VLS on the surface."
"Improvise!"
"There's no way to flood the tubes after we fire. If we
launch too many weapons we'll be too buoyant to dive!" "There's plenty of water coming over the bow." "Aye, aye."
Jeffrey saw two of the heavy pressure-proof VLS doors pop open. He saw another flash, another Harpoon launch. Challenger and the Bremen to the north were closing at almost sixty knots. The Harpoon came at his ship, more like six hundred. There was a blinding flash and a terrible roar. Jeffrey and the others in the cockpit ducked instinctively. There was another flash and roar, and Challenger nosed and bucked even harder. Jeffrey was bathed in unbearable heat, and he choked on noxious fumes. He peeked over the edge of the cockpit. Yellow-white flame receded fore and aft of the ship. The third Harpoon had missed, just barely. The Tomahawks sought their targets. Before the frigates could zero in and jam the guidance frequencies, both weapons hit. The frigate to the south was ripped by the Tomahawk, whose thousand-pound warhead was much larger than a Harpoon's. The frigate began to sink, blocking the channel, protecting Challenger's rear. But the Bremen to
the north, burning now, began to settle too. If it did, Challenger would be trapped. Jeffrey had a clear view of the northern Bremen. The flames lit dense black smoke. The frigate was drifting sideways in the channel. Its bow was already level with the water. Jeffrey ordered Willey to push the reactor hard. It was a race against time, and a fraction of a knot might make the difference. As if to mock Jeffrey, something on the northern Bremen exploded. An on-deck missile pod? Balls of fire spewed.
At last Challenger reached the sinking frigate.
"Helm, Bridge, all stop. Rotate the ship on auxiliary propulsors to true bearing zero four five. Then translate us due north. I want to shove that Bremen out of the way." Meltzer acknowledged.
Sharp concussions went off inside the Bremen. By now anyone still alive had abandoned the hulk. Jeffrey saw men in the water. Montgomery covered them with his machine gun, but they were in no shape to threaten Challenger. Jeffrey and Montgomery and the lookout were forced to go below and shut the hatch, because of the heat and smoke, and the secondary explosions and flying wreckage.
Jeffrey stepped on his intercom wire by mistake, and it yanked his lip mike askew. " Collision alarm!" he shouted down the ladder to the phone talker. The raucous siren blared.
In the CACC, Jeffrey knew, Bell watched the scene via photonics imagery. Still in the sail trunk, Jeffrey called it up on his laptop, to conn the ship. When they were very close he ordered COB to lower the masts.
Jeffrey was almost thrown from the ladder when Challenger nudged the starboard bow of the Bremen hard. He fixed his mike. He told Meltzer to use more forward auxiliary propulsor thrust, to lever the hulk aside, like a tugboat. Jeffrey heard more blasts through the hull. Shivers and jolts were transmitted from the steel side of the Bremen to the ceramic side of Challenger, right through her anechoic skin. At last the pathway north was clear.
"Ahead flank! Make your course three four five!" Straight up the Sound. Jeffrey climbed through the bridge hatch. There were bits of smoking debris in the cockpit and atop the sail. The Plexiglas windscreen was melted. He peered over the port side. By the glare of the burning fri
gate he could see Challenger's coatings were scorched. The sonar wide arrays were mounted low on her main hull's flanks, and Jeffrey hoped they weren't badly damaged. Montgomery climbed on top of the sail on his belly, and batted bits of frigate away. He fired a short burst as a test—the machine gun was okay. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise the masts.
Behind him, with one final shuddering detonation, the Bremen settled on the bottom; its superstructure protruded above the waves, still burning fiercely. The underwater blast caused several mines in the shallows to detonate sympathetically. Jeffrey doubted many German sailors in the water survived.
Challenger cleared another fog bank. She was free of the confining dredged channel, but the water was still so shallow she had to stay on the east side of the Sound, the Swedish side. The icy wind and freezing salt spray bit Jeffrey's face. Over his right shoulder Jeffrey saw another flash, quick and sharp: a naval defense gun on the Swedish coast. The shell landed a hundred yards off Challenger's bow, directly ahead of the ship. The bridge crew ducked as water fountained. Razor-sharp shell splinters pelted the sail.
"Helm, Bridge. Left standard rudder. We're violating Swedish neutrality"
"Bridge, Nay," Sessions broke in.. "No can do, sir, unless we slow down. We need bottom clearance the way the pump jet's digging in."
"ESM, Bridge. How are they tracking us? That gun's dead-on."
"Infrared laser, sir. There's no way we can jam."
"Yes, there is." The gun was off Challenger's starboard quarter, near Malmo, on a headland. "Chief of the Watch, raise the snorkel mast. Start the emergency diesel. Figure out how to put oil into the exhaust, to make a smoke screen." The diesel air intake had nuclear-biologicalchemical filters, and detectors to warn of bad air, just in case. Another Swedish shell landed, one hundred yards astern, again dead-on in azimuth. The ship was bracketed, an unmistakable message the next shell wouldn't miss. Jeffrey heard and saw another gun open up, from near Copenhagen, on the occupied Danish side: incoming German fire this time. Challenger was caught in the middle. Her diesel coughed to life. Stinking exhaust poured from the vents in the sail, then dense smoke obscured the view aft.
"Helm, Bridge. Zigzag smartly!"
Meltzer turned hard right. A Swedish shell landed in Challenger's wake. Another landed where she would've been if she had stayed on course. Another flash near Copenhagen, off Challenger's port bow. Another German shell landed, almost as close. Dirty water drenched the cockpit. The stench of high explosives mixed with diesel fumes.
"Weps, Bridge. Target that naval gun by Copenhagen with a land-attack Tomahawk. Fire at will." Another VLS hatch popped open. This time the bridge crew knew to go below before the booster ignited.
They were past Copenhagen and Malmo now. They avoided the wreckage of the new bridge-and-tunnel that connected those two cities—started in the late nineties, finished in time to be destroyed by the Swedes as German forces flooded into Denmark. Jeffrey lost sight of the structure's
stumps in his own smoke screen, streaming out behind the ship.
Despite ESM's efforts to spoof the gunnery radars, more German shells tried to follow from behind. Some came very close. Jeffrey ducked, and shrapnel whistled, and something behind him made a whack.
"Bridge, Control. Attack periscope photonics mast knocked out." It was only a matter of time before a five-or eight-inch shell hit the hull. Ahead would lie more naval guns, and soon they'd be in visual range, and from that direction the smoke screen wouldn't work. Jeffrey ordered land-attack Tomahawks launched to take the guns out. Again he and Montgomery and the lookout went below and felt and heard the missiles launch. When the boosters were well clear, they went topside.
"Fire Control, Bridge. I -want to launch four more ISLMMs. Preset them to loop up around Sjaelland Island. Lay a mine barrier across the mouth of the Great Belt. Warships may be racing from Kiel to head us off."
Bell acknowledged. He announced when each weapon was fired. It was slow work loading tubes manually, especially against Challenger's constant pitch and roll. Jeffrey used lens paper to dry his goggles and binocs, drenched again by flying spray; his weatherproof laptop was holding up.
ESM announced more surface search radars, German corvettes coming from the north. Jeffrey ordered ADCAPs fired to intercept. Challenger passed an enemy fast-patrol craft, hiding in ambush in a cove. He fired an antiship Tomahawk before it could launch its missiles. The Tomahawk burst viciously.
The ADCAPs hit their targets to the north, and Jeffrey saw bright flashes. More loud booms rolled across the Sound. The water was still very shallow, barely fifty feet, but at least the Sound was wide enough now Jeffrey could evade the wrecks. Challenger entered a snow squall, then came out the other side. Again Jeffrey cleaned his goggles and binocs.
"It's awfully quiet in the air," Montgomery said. "We should've stirred up one heck of a hornet's nest by now."
"I was thinking that," Jeffrey said. "Maybe our side sprang an info warfare assault on Axis command and control. Saving something really special, for a time like this."
"Then where are all our planes, sir?"
"Maybe the Axis did it to us, too."
In that case everything on and over the sea would come down to map reading, guesswork, and the Mark 1 human eyeball.
Challenger was running low on ammo. The Germans held the cards; soon they'd get their act together, and stop committing forces piecemeal.
Ven Island lay ahead, in the middle of the navigable part of the Sound. Ven was owned by Sweden, heavily fortified. Challenger had to come left. This forced them closer to Denmark, where the channel was studded with shoals.
Soon Challenger would be in range of accurate fire from yet more naval guns, in line of sight above the horizon, where laser range-finding worked.
Then Jeffrey heard something worse than naval guns. He heard the clatter of helo blades to the northwest.
"Fire Control, Bridge. What airfield bears three one five?"
"A German army base on Sjaelland, Captain."
Jeffrey spotted the helos in his big binocs. The lookout said they were Tigers—brandnew attack aircraft. Their shaped-charge antitank rockets could easily blast through Challenger's hull.
Montgomery leaped atop the sail and traversed his machine gun, for all the good it would do.
Jeffrey glanced at his search 'scope mast. It tracked the squadron of Tigers as they moved closer, strung out in line ahead.
"Fire Control, knock them down."
One by one a quadruplet of Polyphems broke the surface in their encapsulated launch tubes. Each lifted off, guided by fiber-optic wire and powered by a turbojet. The Tigers scattered, but the Polyphems' forty-pound fragmentation warheads shredded four helos. They burst into flames and crashed, but the other helos pressed on. Soon the eight survivors would be in rocket range, and it would take time to load more Polyphems.
"Bridge, ESM."
"ESM, Bridge, aye."
"Captain, static and propagation are fluctuating heavily. We're getting snatches of a big air battle shaping up due west."
"Range?"
"One hundred miles."
Hot-white light flared northwest, again and again. Balls of fire jetted toward Challenger—antitank rockets. Jeffrey screamed for the helm to zigzag. Once more he and the lookout ducked, and Montgomery dove headfirst into the cockpit. The chief landed on Jeffrey, knocking the wind from Jeffrey's chest.
The rocket motors roared. There was a red-white eruption. Waves of heat lashed the cockpit. A rocket had hit the after part of the sail, burning through the side of the structure, hardened for under-ice operations. Jeffrey glanced at the helos as they drew closer, just in time to see four more jink and then explode—another salvo of Polyphems hit home. He peered over the cockpit edge but couldn't see where the enemy rocket hit. He did see black smoke pour from the side of the sail. That part was free flooding, but it housed the floating-wire antenna winch. He ordered damage control parties to get in there from below with CO2.
F
our Tigers still lived. They ripple-fired their rockets, then turned away. The rockets tore the air and pelted the sea. Several hit Challenger's forward hull, or rather the water cascading over it. They struck at a glancing angle to the surface, and the sea quenched their shaped-charge plasma jets. Others landed aft, and Jeffrey hoped they'd also failed to damage the ship—from the cockpit he couldn't see the after hull. Another rocket hit the after part of the sail. Jeffrey ducked. One hit the outside of the cockpit. It burst, and hot gas and metal from its armor-piercing shaped-charge warhead jetted through and instantly burned a hole on the other side. Jeffrey and Montgomery, lying flat on the bridge hatch, looked at each other wide-eyed, amazed to be alive. Then they realized their life vests were on fire. They tore them off and threw them over the side.
Another four Polyphems pursued the remaining Tigers in the distance. They impacted one by one. The blasts and sheets of flame were much larger than the rocket hits on Challenger.
Jeffrey and Montgomery realized the lookout was gone, and the cockpit was spattered with smoldering gore.
Jeffrey saw Montgomery's machine gun was wrecked, and ordered him below—it was just too dangerous up here. The chief carried the ruined weapon down, and Jeffrey passed him boxes of ammo.
Now Jeffrey stood on the bridge alone, and they still had so far to go. Jeffrey ordered the ship to slow momentarily. He wanted a man to mount the hull behind the sail, wearing a lifeline from the aft escape trunk, to do a close visual inspection for damage from the antitank rocket hits. If the hull had been burned through, even just partway, Challenger would never dive again.
They were past Ven Island now. The main hull was okay, but Willey reported the protruding top of the rudder looked like Swiss cheese. The fire inside the sail was out, but two firefighters had third-degree burns through their suits from shaped-charge blasts. The choke point at the north end of the Sound was coming up fast. Challenger ran north at flank speed; wind whistled through the holes in the side of the cockpit. She wasn't meant for surface battle: She had no chaff dispensers, no magnesium decoy flares. Her ESM abilities were limited, just one mast with small antennas.